Ann: hidden depths, even a dark side?

[oursin.livejournal.com]

I've been thinking a bit lately about Ann, who is the recurrent character whose inner life we know least about - I'm trying to remember if there are any scenes anywhere in any of the books from her pov at all. If her physical resemblance to her siblings wasn't mentioned, one might think that they'd got the babies mixed up at the hospital. On the other hand, she does do classically Marlovian things like being good at games (cf the discussion with her form about throwing the match in The Cricket Term, in which it's assumed that she will be playing, until her ethical position comes into conflict with the general feeling on the subject), and her impressive performance as Mary in the Nativity Play - where she manages compelling stillness and silence; not to mention the general taking charge, being a dorm prefect and probably on the fast-track to Head Girl (she is so the kind of thing Miss Keith likes, though I could, actually, imagine conflicts). Oh yes, and she also plays the piano, well.

Although her selflessness and helpfulness are shown as intensely annoying to her siblings, there's never any doubt that Ann is entirely sincere, and is not one of those characters who recur in the novels of Charlotte Yonge, who are apparent epitomes of virtue but whose spiritual pride leads them to a fall.

Yet, it's a curious insight into her character when, in Peter's Room, she admits to identifying with Charlotte Bronte - it's almost as startling as if she'd confessed to wanting to be Amy March rather than Beth (she must surely regret the lack of modern opportunities to take gruel to the infectious deserving poor). This is an identification which involves completely eliminating Giles and Lawrie from the picture, and killing off Karen and Rowan. Not to mention their mother. Hmmm. And suggests a hidden romanticism at odds with what we thought we knew about her.

Is she really going to placidly continue on to become a nurse? Might she fall victim to a cult? Given the opportunities for women now in the C of E, might she seek ordination? Are there surprises in store?

Comments

[liadnan]

I don't have the books to hand, but I have a dim recollection of two conversations, one between Nicola and Dr herrick in End of Term, the other between Tim and Miranda in Autumn Term, where one is left with an impression that somehow Ann's spirituality is left lookiing somewhat superficial and second-rate...

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

I think I agree with you - Ann would never think that taking a hawk into a church was appropriate, while Nick sees it as a sign of believing properly/wholeheartedly. Is the Tim and Miranda one where the virgin birth is just the kind of gloriously unlikely thing that one or the other of them might believe?

[liadnan]

That sounds like it yes. It's Attic Term, not Autumn Term: Tim and Miranda left on their own over half term to come up with something to replace the Christmas play. And so Patrick (ghosting AF)'s reactions to Vatican II very much on evidence and the whys and wherefores of deep religious belief generally apparent throughout.

[oursin.livejournal.com]

I'm never exactly sure about what Patrick's religious beliefs mean to him apart from the adherence to long family tradition.

[liadnan]

I'm not sure he does either though, which is par for the course for an intelligent and highly educated teenage boy in a devout Catholic household (and for all I know equivalents in other faiths). Quite a lot is to do with the romance of being Catholic through penal times, standing up against the might of the state etc. I suspect. He exhibits a devotion to Edmund Campion and Thomas More at some point: something in which I have sympathy with him, but it's nonetheless telling.

[oursin.livejournal.com]

There's none of the agonising over minutiae that I find so distressing (and yet compelling to read) in Antonia White's Frost in May, though that may be the over-meticulousness of the convert (esp by comparison with her cradle-Catholic friends) anyway.

[oursin.livejournal.com]

Hmm - I was having thoughts about this and I couldn't help thinking about Grahame Greene and Brighton Rock and people who are Catholics and Know Good and Evil, even though they're not just sinners, they're psychopathic thugs, are somehow Better than people who just know the difference between Right and Wrong. Which I found when I first read it, and still consider, a maddening (and probably not exactly theologically orthodox) position.

[liadnan]

Certainly not orthodox. Borders on Jansenism.

(Find myself wondering whether AF ever met or corresponded with Greene or Waugh, particularly post VII)

[oursin.livejournal.com]

I've finally managed to run down a passage I was looking for by Stella Gibbons about a similar type of person (though the character in question is a bit more intrusively intervening than Ann usually appears to be). It's in Shadow of a Sorcerer (1955):

She had never been lovely or silly or selfish; she had always been a grand sensible type.... It did not occur to him that Ruth might have had to struggle with the temptations which beset a grand sensible type; the temptation to be hard, to be bossy, to neglect the sacramental side of church-going in favour of good works, to think that she knew everything.